This invention relates to an electrical switch structure wherein a switching element is ON-OFF operated manually by a lever and especially to an electrical switch structure in which said lever is latched in the actuated position and unlatched back to the initial neutral position.
In the prior art system, such kind of the switch structure as stated above has been used in a vehicle as a turn signal indicator switch, window regulator switch, sun roof switch and the like. Among those switches the turn signal indicator switch is equipped around the steering shaft and so designed that the lever moves back willy-nilly from the latched actuated position to the unlatched neutral position when a driver has rotated the steering wheel back after completing a turn.
Pursuant to said turn signal indicator switch, the mechanism to release the lever from the actuated position comprises an interlocking device physically coupled to the steering shaft so that the structure itself becomes complicated, while disadvantageously the part components are likely to wear to cause a failure. In addition, the configuration is such that the lever has to be disposed around the steering shaft so that the setting location is regulated.
On the other hand, in the window regulator switch the lever is required to be self-held in the latched actuated position until the window is fully open or closed. For this purpose a solenoid operated plunger has been conventionally employed as a self-holding means where said plunger is movably mounted in a dual direction so as to be responsive to the open and close action of the window glass so that the whole structure itself disadvantageously becomes large.